Thursday night’s bill at Lee’s Palace was one that featured two artists with extremely contrasting performing styles, making for a rather interesting night. Opening the show was Portugal’s The Gift. Never heard of them? Me neither. However, there were a few people who have. Probably Portuguese. The Gift has been around for seventeen years, financed and recorded five albums and won a MTV Europe award before. There show here was probably a long awaited one by a small legion of fans here in Toronto, which meant the crowd for the Gift won the following:

The Panic Manual Award for Highest Percentage of People in the Crowd Taking Pictures of Themselves at the Show

Seriously, the few people who were there all took pictures of themselves at the show, you know, the one where they have their back to the stage, and then have someone take a picture of them at the show with the band in the background. Kind of like when you go to the zoo, see a panda, and want you and the panda in the picture.

The Gift’s stage show was something else. Sónia Tavares is one of the more unique lead singers I have seen on stage. Maybe it was because she was visibly pregnant, but her combination of 50s style here, shiny black dress, sneaker pumps and tattoo’ed arms made her look like no other. Sonia, whose voice reminds me of a more feminine Brian Molko, sang her songs with an absurd amount of facial expressions and arm movements. Sometimes it seemed to slide into camp territory, but maybe that’s just how they are. It was a lot to take in at once. The rest of the band remained rather stoic for most of the set, until the conclusion (Race is Long), when the keyboardist decided to play air triangle and made a bunch of invisible karate chops. It was a sight that needed to be seen.

Musically, the Gift’s sound ranged from 80s power balladesque tracks to upbeat eurosynth pop songs. I think I will have to listen to their album more to really pick apart their sound, because their show had so much going on visually it kind of distracted me from the music. Still, when they left the stage shortly after ten, I had a large smile on my face.